Covid-19 forces contact center agents home

This is an extract from our recent report Intelligent automation in the telco contact center. Download the report now for the full insight. Covid-19 forces contact center agents home Nearly every communications service provider (CSP) has a dramatic story about shifting its contact center workforce to a work-from-home (WFH) model in record time due to the pandemic. Now that it has happened and operators have worked through the initial shock of moving agents home, WFH is revealing some tangible benefits.

“The pandemic hit our care operations especially hard because our care model…is designed for teams to work in close collaboration,” writes Callie Field, Executive Vice President, Customer Care, T-Mobile US. “They sit together.”

Field explains that T-Mobile US moved 12,000 employees in 17 contact centers to WFH in just 20 days, between March 11 – the day the World Health Organization declared the pandemic – and March 31. This meant providing VPN access for all agents and finding safe ways to move 60,000 PCs, monitors and other accessories to their homes. Contact center equipment was “sanitized and boxed up into tech kits” and provided to employees via curbside pickup, and the company adopted new digital collaboration tools like Slack, WebEx and Skype. The impact of this disruption was serious, according to Field, as average call wait-time jumped to nearly four hours from less than 90 seconds. Absenteeism among employees reached almost 50% at the height of the crisis, but once agents adjusted to WFH, it dropped to 13%. In addition, wait-times have returned to normal, and the company’s NPS ratings “are at record highs,” she adds.

Verizon uses virtualized desktops

Prior to the pandemic, 20% of Verizon’s agent workforce was equipped to work from home. “But over a weekend we had to move 100% of our agents to work from home,” Shankar Arumugavelu, Group CIO, Verizon, explained during a recent TM Forum Hard Talk panel discussion.

“We had virtualized our call center desktops several years ago, and that was key for us to be able to pivot.” Verizon shifted 115,000 employees to WFH using its internally-developed, home-based solution that provides an agent desktop and access point to connect with all Verizon’s back-end applications.

The company also had to make new accommodations for staff at retail stores and installers, including reskilling 20,000 retail staffers and moving them to other parts of the business “because they didn’t have a store to go to,” according to Arumugavelu. He added that the pandemic also “pushed more curbside and in-store pick-up” to serve retail customers. Similarly, Covid-19 has accelerated Verizon’s adoption of new technology for installers, such as remote visual assistance tools that use augmented reality. New field workforce applications will enable zero-touch drop-offs. The graphic below shows how it works. Arumugavelu says these kinds of solutions help agents solve problems faster and reduce the need for costly truck rolls.

Verizon moves to zero-touch installations

Covid-19’s impact on T-Mobile US

AT&T eats its own cooking to help customers

Prior to the pandemic, none of the employees in AT&T’s Consumer or Business contact centers were working from home, so in less than 48 hours the company had to deliver solutions to enable agents to begin to work remotely. AT&T did this by using a variety of different platforms including in some areas its own product, called Cloud Contact Center. The company also deployed:

Despite the circumstances, WFH “shines a spotlight on how businesses can maintain a high quality of engagement with their customers,” says Rich Shaw, Vice President, Voice and Collaboration, AT&T Business. “With the right tools, we feel it can create situations in which agents can be more focused, more relaxed, more engaged and more willing to help.”

A bigger talent pool

CSPs are realizing tangible benefits now that agents can work from home. “We’ve seen higher productivity than before with it,” says Rakesh Ajbani, Senior General Manager – Digital CX and Omnichannel, Dialog Axiata. “I foresee this as a game changer to the contact center.” He adds that the advantages range from reduced real estate costs to improved agent productivity. The workforce talent pool for agents also has expanded. “You will be able to hire talent from any region,” he explains.

Adrian Kempton, VP Architecture at TELUS, agrees: “You expand your workforce when WFH is a mechanism. Someone who would have spent two hours commuting suddenly becomes viable for employment.” Kempton admits that training and management of agents’ performance still needs to be optimized for a WFH model, but the trade-off is worth it. “It will help us attract and retain people,” he says. Ajbani adds that Covid-19 forced change at Axiata: “Our traditional belief that customer service could only be provided centrally in this piece of real estate is no longer true.”

If contact center agents stay home, what will it mean for technology adoption and automation in contact centers? In the next section, we examine the contact center’s immediate future and how the shift to WFH, coupled with a continuing need to improve CX, will impact contact center technology. Equipment is delivered to a customer’s entryway A private SMS link leads customers to a live video chat The installer annotates the live video to guide customers through self-installation